The plastic industry is the third largest manufacturing industry in the United States. Due to their relatively low cost, ease of manufacture, versatility, and imperviousness to water, plastics are used in an enormous and expanding range of products. Plastics have already displaced many traditional materials, such as wood; stone; horn and bone; leather; paper; metal; glass; and ceramic, in most of their former uses. However, many full landfills and contaminated waters are filled with various products that are displaced, as well as plastics themselves.
For this reason, it is useful to develop a method where multiple articles can be recycled and reused to create a useable, one-piece, encapsulated plastic product. This has several advantages including the fact that the process can eliminate some of the plastics and other articles being dumped into the landfills. This allows recycling of various items such as plastics, paper, wood fibers, metals, and glass into a plastic product that can be used while also keeping the public's ground water safe. No prior art appears to deal with a method to recycle multiple materials into a one-piece plastic product using harmless materials such as those mentioned above. Certain existing patents deal with the process of encapsulation itself, but not encapsulating already existing materials into a one-piece plastic product. Another patent does deal with encapsulating harmful materials such as hazardous waste in order to help with the disposal. However, the present invention uses materials such as plastics, paper, wood fibers, metals, and glass and encapsulates them into a plastic one-piece article for use in other items. No published patent applications were found.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,319,522 for ENCAPSULATED PRODUCT AND METHOD OF MANUFACTURE issued Jun. 7, 1994 to Ford Motor Company discloses a method for encapsulating an object with a heat-shrinkable material prior to subjecting the encapsulated object to insert, injection molding. The encapsulation protects the object from thermal damage by preventing contact with the injected polymer. In addition, the encapsulation protects the object from contact by any liquids or other foreign materials which penetrate the molded enclosure.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,179,637 for POLYETHYLENE ENCAPSULATED PRODUCT AND METHOD OF MAKING THE SAME issued Apr. 20, 1965 to Barton P. Brodt discloses a process for the encapsulation of chemical compounds. More particularly, the invention relates to the preparation of delayed-action elastomer processing agents and their compositions.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,732,364 for COMPOSITION AND PROCESS FOR THE ENCAPSULATION AND STABILIZATION OF RADIOACTIVE, HAZARDOUS AND MIXED WASTES issued Mar. 24, 1998 to Paul D. Kalb discloses a composition and process for disposal of radioactive, hazardous and mixed wastes. It preferably includes a process for multibarrier encapsulation of wastes by combining substantially simultaneously dry waste power, a non-biodegradable thermoplastic polymer and an anhydrous additive in an extruder to form a homogenous molten matrix.
The patents listed above deal with either a general form of encapsulation or encapsulation of hazardous or mixed wastes. The patents do not focus on encapsulating materials such as plastics, paper, wood fibers, metals, and glass into a one-piece plastic product for use in other items.
Due to the fact that landfills are full of up to 50% plastics, as well as paper, wood fibers, metals, and glass, it is useful to have a method to re-use these items to form a durable one-piece plastic product, rather than forming a plastic product from scratch.